Voter anger a media creation?

Political pundits and Democratic politicians scoffed Wednesday at the notion of an anti-incumbent wave hitting campaigns this midterm season, blaming the media for spreading the story line that they insist isn’t real.

“The concept of an anti-incumbent mood has been oversold by the right wing and repeated by a gullible press all year,” said Frost, a two-time Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman. “Very few incumbents have actually lost this year. How many Blanche Lincolns and Michael Bennets have to win before the press realizes this is not the real story?”

Six incumbents have lost this season: Sens. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and Reps. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) and Parker Griffith (R-Ala.). Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, pointed out in Arena that factoring for those losses translated into a 98.3 percent win rate for incumbents so far in 2010.

These statistics are “about normal on a 40-year average,” Sabato said, arguing that the idea of an anti-incumbency wave is a “press-manufactured phenomenon.”

“And even if there is such a wave on Nov. 2, it hasn’t shown up in the primaries,” Sabato said. “Time for a new story line. The old one is being worn thin by the facts.”

“As long as cable news needs talking heads to talk trends and revolt, these changes at the margin will always be magnified beyond their real impact on the body politic,” quipped Michael Yaki, a Democratic member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a former aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in Arena.

Meanwhile, Republicans argued that the anti-incumbent and anti-establishment mood was real and predicted that the sentiments would boost their party come fall.

Tuesday’s results “pretty much continued the trend we’ve seen,” former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.) told Arena. “It’s not good to be a Washington insider this year.”

“It only takes a day of living outside of Washington to realize that the media isn’t manufacturing the current hardship of Americans,” added Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. “Let’s look at the facts. After countless promises of positive change were made by President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority during the 2008 election. American voters have felt burned by the lack of visible progress. A poor economy, high jobless rate, stagnant incomes and a weak housing market are key factors to a ‘throw the bums out’ state of mind.”